Will folded up the three odorous sheets of scrawled blue paper and replaced them in their envelope. His face was expressionless; but behind this mask of indifference he was violently angry. Angry with this ill-mannered boy before him, so ravishing in his white silk pajamas, so odious in his spoiled silliness. Angry, as he caught another whiff of the letter, with that grotesque monster of a woman, who had begun by ruining her son, in the name of mother love and chastity, and was now egging him on, in the name of God and an assortment of Ascended Masters, to become a bomb-dropping spiritual crusader under the oily ban ner of Joe Aldehyde. Angry, above all, with himself for having so wantonly become involved with this ludicrously sinister couple, in heaven only knew what kind of a vile plot against all the human decencies that his refusal to take yes for an answer had never prevented him from secretly believing in and (how passionately! ) longing for.

"Well, shall we go?" said Murugan in a tone of airy confidence. He was evidently assuming as axiomatic that, when Fatima R. issued a command, obedience must necessarily be complete and unhesitating.

Feeling the need to give himself a little more time to cool off, Will made no immediate answer. Instead, he turned away to look at the now distant puppets. Jocasta, Oedipus and Creon were sitting on the palace steps, waiting, presumably, for the arrival of Tiresias. Overhead, Basso Profundo was momentarily napping. A party of black-robed mourners was crossing the stage. Near the footlights the boy from Pala had begun to declaim in blank verse:

There was a ripple of plucked strings, then the long-drawn notes of a flute.

"Shall we go?" Murugan repeated.

But Will held up his hand for silence. The girl puppet had moved to the center of the stage and was singing:

Losing all patience, Murugan caught hold of Will's arm and gave him a savage pinch. "Are you coming?" he shouted.

Will turned on him angrily. "What the devil do you think you're doing, you little fool?" He jerked his arm out of the boy's grasp.

Intimidated, Murugan changed his tone. "I just wanted to know if you were ready to come to my mother's."

"I'm not ready," Will answered, "because I'm not going."

"Not going?" Murugan cried in a tone of incredulous amazement. "But she expects you, she . . ."

"Tell your mother I'm very sorry, but I have a prior engagement. With someone who's dying," Will added.

"But this is frightfully important."

"So is dying."

Murugan lowered his voice. "Something's happening," he whispered.

"I can't hear you," Will shouted through the confused noises of the crowd.

Murugan glanced about him apprehensively, then risked a somewhat louder whisper. "Something's happening, something tremendous."

"Something even more tremendous is happening at the hos pital."

"We just heard . . ." Murugan began. He looked around again, then shook his head. "No, I can't tell you-not here. That's why you must come to the bungalow. Now. There's no time to lose."

Will glanced at his watch. "No time to lose," he echoed and, turning to Mary Sarojini, "We must get going," he said. "Which way?"

"I'll show you," she said, and they set offhand in hand.

"Wait," Murugan implored, "wait!" Then, as Will and Mary Sarojini held on their course, he came dodging through the crowd in pursuit. "What shall I tell her?" he wailed at their heels.

The boy's terror was comically abject. In Will's mind anger gave place to amusement. He laughed aloud. Then, halting, "What would you tell her, Mary Sarojini?" he asked.

"I'd tell her exactly what happened," said the child. "I mean, if it was my mother. But then," she added on second thought, "my mother isn't the Rani." She looked up at Murugan. "Do you belong to an MAC?" she enquired.

Of course he didn't. For the Rani the very idea of a Mutual Adoption Club was a blasphemy. Only God could make a Mother. The Spiritual Crusader wanted to be alone with her God-given victim.

"No MAC." Mary Sarojini shook her head. "That's awful!

You might have gone and stayed for a few days with one of your other mothers."

Still terrified by the prospect of having to tell his only mother about the failure of his mission, Murugan began to harp almost hysterically on a new variant of the old theme. "I don't know what she'll say," he kept repeating. "I don't know what she'll say."

"There's only one way to find out what she'll say," Will told him. "Go home and listen."

"Come with me," Murugan begged. "Please." He clutched at Will's arm.

"I told you not to touch me." The clutching hand was hastily withdrawn. Will smiled again. "That's better!" He raised his staff in a farewell gesture. "Bonne nuit, Altesse." Then to Mary Sarojini, "Lead on, MacPhail," he said in high good humor.

"Were you putting it on?" Mary Sarojini asked. "Or were you really angry?"

"Really and truly," he assured her. Then he remembered what he had seen in the school gymnasium. He hummed the opening notes of the Rakshasi Hornpipe and banged the pavement with his ironshod staff.

"Ought I to have stamped it out?"

"Maybe it would have been better."

"You think so?"

"He's going to hate you as soon as he's stopped being frightened."

Will shrugged his shoulders. He couldn't care less. But as the past receded and the future approached, as they left the arc lamps of the marketplace and climbed the steep dark street that wound uphill to the hospital, his mood began to change. Lead on, MacPhail-but towards what, and away from what? Towards yet another manifestation of the Essential Horror and away from all hope of that blessed year of freedom which Joe Aldehyde had promised and that it would be so easy and (since Pala was doomed in any event) not so immoral or treacherous to earn, And not only away from the hope of freedom; away quite possi bly, if the Rani complained to Joe and if Joe became sufficiently indignant, from any further prospects of well-paid slavery as a professional execution watcher. Should he turn back, should he try to find Murugan, offer apologies, do whatever that dreadful woman ordered him to do? A hundred yards up the road, the lights of the hospital could be seen shining between the trees.

"Let's rest for a moment," he said.

"Are you tired?" Mary Sarojini enquired solicitously.

"A little."

He turned and, leaning on his staff, looked down at the market place. In the light of the arc lamps the town hall glowed pink, like a monumental serving of raspberry sherbet. On the temple spire he could see, frieze above frieze, the exuberant chaos of Indie sculpture-elephants and Bodhisattvas, demons, supernat ural girls with breasts and enormous bottoms, capering Shivas, rows of past and future Buddhas in quiet ecstasy. Below, in the space between sherbet and mythology, seethed the crowd, and somewhere in that crowd was a sulky face and a pair of white satin pajamas. Should he go back? It would be the sensible, the safe, the prudent thing to do. But an inner voice-not little, like the Rani's, but stentorian-shouted, "Squalid! Squalid!" Con science? No. Morality? Heaven forbid! But supererogatory squalor, ugliness and vulgarity beyond the call of duty-these were things which, as a man of taste, one simply couldn't be a party to.